


no silver lining

by bardshaming (galamiel)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other, self indulgent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 18:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6670342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galamiel/pseuds/bardshaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>self indulgent ficlets/drabbles of warrior of light and haurch<br/>probably ooc, will not necessarily go in chronological order</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She's a little smaller in person than he'd imagined her being, slight build and slender body covered in malm upon malm of chainmail and carefully polished plate. Her face is hidden behind a visored helmet and her arms hang limply at her sides, gauntleted and shining. He imagines that a brocade cape would finish the deal off. It would look best somewhere sunny, maybe Gridania, the wind gusting and making her look heroic.

It almost looks comical in his head.

She tips her visor open to show him nothing more than downturned doe eyes, half hidden in the shadow of her visor and set above a slim nose bridge. Her brows are completely hidden, leaving her expressions mostly a guess. She squints towards him and he imagines she's taking him in, much like he did her.

He wonders what she sees? An overtired lordling in a stifling stone room, surrounded by hearth and a host of exercising, sweating recruits, boxed in by mountains of unfinished paperwork that keeps piling up. No cape on this lord, here; he's been hidden away, and the key is a pen that's long run out of ink, slick instead with blood as he scribbles out signature after signature by flickering candlelight.

Her disdain is nigh palpable. He thinks he's in love.

Little Lord Leveilleur is unaware of the measuring going on between the knight and the warrior, speaking levelly, professionally (and quite a feat for his age) to people who are, distinctly, not paying attention to him. He notices this rather abruptly and peters off into silence, this tips of his ears going a little red as he stutters his last word or two, glancing first at the warrior and then, hopefully, at Lord Greystone.

Haurchefant obliges him.

"You are the Warrior of Light I've heard so much about, then?" the bastard lord finally greeted.

His blood rushes as the warrior narrows her eyes at him and then extends him the courtesy of an ever so slight, derisive incline of her head. Just enough to get away with, he thinks. What politeness does she owe him, a lord at the far end of nowhere? He has nothing for her, he thinks. She cares naught for him. 

"What is that?" he goads. "You don't talk?" his laughter is booming and jovial. 

He likes her too much.

Alphinaud is concerned, as if some international insult is passing between the connected gazes of his friend and the lord of Camp Dragonhead right under his nose--and this is possibly the opposite of what he's been sent to accomplish.

"She means no insult," the lordling begins, for which he gets a glare directed towards him--from both parties. He ignores Haurchefant and glares back at the warrior just as fiercely. "Our warrior is not the very vocal type."

"Is that so?" This was beginning to sound like a challenge, and he wonders how many very  _vocal_ noises he could coax from her throat.

And, judging by the particularly nasty look she's giving him, she knows exactly what is going through his mind.

Haurchefant calms himself, mostly for the sake of the young Lord Leveilleur, and behaves from then on with only the most perfect decorum. The same, however, cannot be said of the warrior of light, who, he swears, at one point tips up the end of her helmet just to spit on the floor when he deigns to make eye contact with her again.

He wants to see her on her knees scrubbing it clean.

"I am here whenever you need a helping hand," he says, proverbially, and then, literally, extending his hand towards the warrior of light.

She turns her nose up at it and his face cracks into a grin.

"Whenever you need a warm hearth and a warmer welcome," he finishes, insistingly.

She slides her visor shut and turns away, her motions controlled and smooth as she walks towards the door. Lord Leveilleur hesitates, making one motion towards the warrior and then, turning back to Haurchefant, sketches a quick bow. "Thank you for your hospitality, Lord Greystone," he says, hurriedly. "I'm sure we'll return again."

He breaks off into a run after the rapidly retreating warrior.

Haurchefant laughs. 


	2. Chapter 2

She lays in his bed like a dead thing, sprawled limbs and closed eyes and hair spread over his pillows. She doesn't move, doesn't make a noise, hardly breathes as she lays prone on his mattress. She's half-dressed in a long tunic, the ties undone at her chest. There's a quilt pulled up to her thighs that has half fallen off the bed, the patchwork mess warming naught but the icy gray stone slabs that pave the floor.

He pulls his shirt over his head.

"Is this how they had you do it in Ul'dah?" he asks, and he can't imagine it, how grown men with families, occupations, hobbies and fascinations and personalities, can get off on such lifeless girls, thin and brittle as straw, bone and vein and silence, lips force closed over grinding teeth and torn out tongues. But he supposes the men who did such things were not men who had such positive aspects about them, were men who were rotten from skin to bone to soul. 

She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at him, blinking sleepily. Her lashes brush her cheeks as her eyes close again, dark and feathery against the sallowness of her skin. Her chapped lips part a little and her arm moves, towards him, hand flopping off the edge of the bed and curling briefly in a come-hither motion.

"I shouldn't ask that," he scolds himself, and the corner of her mouth quirks up into a half smile. "And you laying there, just taking it and pretending to be asleep. I'll have you know I don't believe it at all." 

He unlaces his breeches and lets them fall to the floor where they blend in with the rest of the discarded clothes he has piling up in various places around his bedroom, intermingled with piles upon piles of leftover paperwork and books he promised to return to their proper place moons ago, torn and tattered and a little damp from the endless beading water that bled through the walls from the snow outside.

It's not healthy for her to be here. She needs sunshine and fresh air. He needs her. 

He pads over to her and takes her hanging hand, bends to press a kiss to the paper-thin skin. It's like ice against his warmth, and he crawls into bed next to her and pulls the quilt up over them both, tucking it around her shoulders as he wraps his arms around her.

She's such a tiny little thing despite her achievements, soft and yielding in his embrace, as weightless and limp as a carefully crafted doll, each feature lovingly detailed by a master: eyes, nose, lips, the scars on her chin, the crack in her tooth, the void where her tongue would be.

He can hardly believe she trusts him enough to let him touch her like this now, without snarls or bared teeth or drawn weapons. It had not been unlike taming a wild animal--but he'd known he'd loved her since the first time he'd seen her, half-stepped into the antechamber of Camp dragonhead, hackles raised and hair bristling, fingers twisted into claws.

The stories of her had been near enough but seeing her in person, feeling the vibrancy of the rage bubbling under a thin layer of skin--well. He'd had to have her.

And now she was curled up, tame as a kitten in his arms. He kisses her forehead and she freezes.

"It's just me, love," he croons soothingly, running a hand down her back. She's as unmoving and rigid as stone now, a gargoyle carved from granite and left in his bed.

He wonders how many men have licked spite into her mouth and spilled poison between her thighs.

He wonders if he wants to know.

One day, he thinks, he will touch her too, and it will not be for money, and it will not be without her consent. He wants only to mend and to heal and to breathe life back into the frozen stone of her body that has cracked under so much pain.


End file.
